Liberal thought and thinkers
T. H. Green: Forgotten Liberal?
Arguments for T. H. Green as the greatest British Liberal.
The development of the New Liberalism as a philosophy of transition
The philosophy that underpinned the Liberal Party’s revival in the 1906 election.
John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873
John Stuart Mill, philosopher, economist, journalist, political writer, social reformer, and, briefly, Liberal MP, is one of the most famous figures in the pantheon of Liberal theorists, and the greatest of the Victorian Liberal thinkers. Yet his relevance is not restricted to the nineteenth century; as L. T. Hobhouse wrote in 1911, in his single…
John Maynard Keynes (Lord Keynes), 1883-1946
Maynard Keynes was an active Liberal as well as one of the most important liberal writers of the twentieth century. He revolutionised economics, creating the case for deficit spending to stimulate employment which became the basis of government economic policy throughout the Western world for almost four decades. He helped to found the international economic…
Thomas Hill Green, 1836-1882
Thomas Hill Green was that rare combination, a high-powered philosopher and political theorist who also contributed effectively to practical politics. His friend, the Cambridge philosopher, Henry Sidgwick, said that while he could hold his own with Green in metaphysics and epistemology, when it came to politics, ‘I always felt the chances were that before long…
Elliott Dodds, 1889-1977
Elliott Dodds lived a life of rich variety and contrast. A southerner by birth, he became indelibly associated with the laissez-faire Liberalism of the northern counties. A journalist, whose political beliefs were breathed into every corner of the Huddersfield Examiner, he wrote extensively throughout his life on the changing relationship between individual liberty and the…
Heir to the New Liberals?
The contribution of the American philosopher John Rawls to political philosophy and Liberal thought.